Psychologyspeaking topic
“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”
— Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (1947)
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- The paradox of hedonism: chase happiness head-on, commanding yourself to 'be happy', and it runs from you; happiness usually arrives as the by-product of something else. Is picking happiness as your goal a doomed choice from the start?
- Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'
- Most of us talk to ourselves inside our head; we hear a voice when we think. But some people have no inner voice at all and think without words. What is thinking like without the inner monologue? Do we need language to think, or is language just the outfit thought puts on?
- The Yerkes-Dodson law: performance drops when arousal is too low and again when it is too high, peaking somewhere in the middle. Why does a little excitement help you while a lot of it paralyzes you?
- The feeling of knowing: even when we can't answer a question, we can sense in advance whether we would recognize the answer. Where does that inner hunch come from?